Knowing your audience

Over the last few weeks we have gone through a variety of readings. Unsurprisingly our class enjoyed the Bill Bryson readings the most. His work was well written and humorous to read. Even when talking about scientists who changed the world, he portrayed them as real people with real emotions (not as beings of perfections as most science texts are prone to do). The other readings were not as enjoyable though. Some, simply because they weren’t meant to be read by us (eg. the article from the physics journal) . The authors targeted different audiences and the material often went over our heads. For the other articles, such as “The Sobel Effect” and “Leviathan and the Air Pump” the quality of writing was just bad. Evidence of this pertains from the fact that my readings of these texts were characterized by frequent naps in between.

Thus when it comes to writing about science and technology, one must have a firm understanding of who one’s audience is. We see that Bill Bryson appears to have done this perfectly. Being a layman he has written for the laymen, and written very well on top of that. The author of the physics article was originally writing for a journal. His article describing the quantum effects of electrons, was never written to be understood by us. Since we as a class, are writing mainly for our peers and fellow Georgia Tech students, we must keep our work interesting, characterized with good quality writing. The material we cover should not be too complex but can be above the average person’s comprehensive ability. This is TECH after all.

thoughts on writing about science and technolgy

In the same way science and technology have pros and cons, writing about them have pros and cons as well. Researchers may find text to not be comprehensive enough while the average Joe might find it to be mind-boggling and overwhelming to understand more than a few lines. In some ways, this range acts as a filter to disregard baseless discoveries and promote rigorous analyze of discovery if they occur. If writing is geared more towards the average Joe, writing science and technology would be more focused on appealing to readers than to comprehensively report a discovery. If science and technology are to advance, the goal should be to make new advances rather than informing people of all walks of life so they have the same knowledge as you to the extent that they should be capable to contribute new ideas from their background. If the writing assumes knowledge of the topics addressed, the average Joe would be faced with a monolithic tree of prerequisites. Some might be irrelevant. Since science and technology are funded by others, making writing to difficult to read would not benefit anyone.

The above just mentions a few issues of writings about science and technology. One idea to fix this could be to catogorize writings into a system of levels. First, only reputable sources would have a level on them. This would prevent anyone writing an article on the internet from self-publishing and categorizing their work without scientific merit. Having a levels system would not create a huge bureaucracy. Writings can be categorized fairly quickly. With several levels, everyone has the chance to know what level writing they could understand for a specific topic and can move up to a higher level once they studied enough. This model seems to already exist in modern day except the number of researches in the highest level drastically decreases. In conclusion, writing in science and technology should be clear, concise, and well documented with references. The rest is up to the effort readers put in to understand, think critically, and perhaps contribute something new.

Is Anybody Out There?

One of the hardest things in writing is entertaining an audience. From a combination of scientific readings it has become clear to me that there is a WIDE variety of ways to write. It seems that these ways to write are a direct reflection of who you want to read what you write. The terms and sentence structure used become more complex as you dive into scientific papers while children's stories are very simple.

As a writer choosing a specific audience might be a difficult task. Most writers tend to pick audiences that are too broad. A writer should pin-point their audience so that they can expound upon examples and terms without the worry of losing readers.
I feel that best sellers are written by authors who have a special lure that appeals to a much wider audience. They are able to write specifically, yet each different audience member is drawn to their stories (i.e. Bill Bryson).

Serendipity and Food

The fruits of serendipity surround us, be it stationary like super glue and post its or antibiotics like penicillin. Most of us however tend to disregard the role that serendipity has played in the food that we eat.

Can you imagine a world without chocolate chip cookies? In 1930, housewife Ruth Graves Wakefield, having run out of regular baker’s chocolate proceeded to bake cookies with bits of semi-sweet Nestle chocolate, believing that they would melt into the mixture. The chocolate chip cookie was thus born. She sold the recipe to Nestle for a lifetime supply of chocolate chips and after subsequent marketing the cookie earned the reputation it has today.

Potato chips too were an accidental discovery brought about by a disgruntled restaurant chef who was getting repeated complaints that his potato dishes were too thick and soggy. The same can be said of the artificial sweetener. It was discovered, of all places, in an anti-fever lab, by chemist James M. Schlatter, who unknowingly licked his finger after it was contaminated with the specimen under study.

Even food as simple as sandwiches and ice cream cones were discovered by accident. There are countless more examples to draw from. In all honesty, without serendipity, I don’t think life would be worth living.

The Relationship Between Serendipity and Intelligence

By reading the work Adventures in Serendipity you will find that the general idea of serendipity is defined by luck and skill. It seems to be that serendipity occurs when the balance of luck and intelligence are working together in order to produce an idea or product. Some argue that these serendipitous acts wouldn't have to occur to have inventions, but is there really a way to prove that?

I think that the dullest of the lines drawn about this definition is its component of skill. We know that in this case skill is defined by your intelligence and therefore your education. Society today is centered around intelligence, and we are constantly pushed to learn new things and apply them to our lives. Most of those who have created today's most important inventions are esteemed with a term of the highest intelligence, genius. Is serendipity only available to those of this status, or is it something more common place? How much intelligence is required to become serendipitous?

Through my research in serendipity I have learned to define it as something available to everyone who, in return, open to learn. For example: within the first years of our lives we are push to obtain one of the most difficult of concepts, language. Is the word first uttered from our lips one of sweat and back-breaking learning or rather just a fluke of sound that made your parents "ooh" and "awh"? I believe that even this occurrence is serendipitous. A perfect balance of flash-card practice and just straight up luck were about and used to help you to form "mama" or "papa" on those early days.

Too much serendipity?

However, I also believe that the higher your level of education the more opportunities that appear for these spontaneous ideas. We all know the story of Newton and the apple -applause to those to link that situation to serendipity. Had Newton not been learned in mathematics and science, he would have only seen this as a great deal of luck not to have to pick up lunch that day! In my opinion, the build-up of your intelligence allows you the ability to differ between regular luck and opportunity. So, in conclusion, serendipitous acts may occur every day in our lives, but we may be mentally incapable at the time to make sense of them.

So what serendipitous signs are you ignoring in your life?

Careful, you could be the next Newton.

The Impact of Serendipity

The word serendipity is hard to define. From James Shulman’s Introduction in the book The Travels and Adventures of SERENDIPITY, he writes “Serendipity can be about finding something of value while seeking something entirely different or it can be about finding a sought-after object in a pace or a manner where it was not at all expected.” In our working knowledge, there are many examples of serendipity. Can you think of a few? If you need examples to get started, here are several: Archimedes discovering density while taking a bathing in Ancient Greece, Newton discovering gravitational force while sitting under an apple tree in England, and Alexander Fleming discovering the antibacterial effects of a drug now known as penicillin after leaving a petri dish to mold in the drawer. As we find more examples, it seems that most serendipity appears science.

Although products of scientific research like drugs and wireless devices undergo rigorous testing and analysis in order to observe all the positive and negative effects of them, numerous ideas for the research originate from serendipity. Perhaps this disproportional makeup of occurrences of serendipity is attributed to the advancement of knowledge. Since serendipity has unclear origins, we use the scientific method to rationalize it. For serendipity in science, they lay the groundwork for more developments on top. Since we use the scientific method to rationalize it, we tend to know more examples from science and technology such as many inventions and laws of nature. On the other hand, it’s hard to think of examples of serendipity in business or fine arts even though they are still under the technology category in the broadest sense. For instance, instead of buying shares of stock to own a company, share price rises and you sell the stock instead to make a profit. Although serendipity occurs in fields such as business and fine arts, serendipity from science and technology makes a more conspicuous impact so we tend to draw more examples from this category.

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Serendipity in Science and Education

Serendipity is not a new topic. The world has seen the fruits produced from unintentional “stumble-upon” discoveries, even though the word itself has only come to the public's attention in the 1950s – 200 years after its origination. Political economist Stanley Jevons summed up the importance of serendipity in scientific discovery as the great breakthrough in new, developing fields of research. Those who are blessed with the luck of discovery being dropped in their laps have to be intelligent enough to notice that what they were not searching for is actually a huge success. Jevons goes on to say that serendipity becomes less and less important in fields such as science as the field progresses. Oersted observed the movement of a needle between two copper wires connected to two poles to unwittingly notice the force of magnetism. Richet experimented with the TB virus and the cure by ingestion of raw meat. These discoveries were in no means the sought answer to the problem. Acceptance of farfetched ideas brings about knowledge of fields of research. Many of those that have encountered serendipity in science were well educated men, capable of conducting experiments and understanding the improbable outcomes. However high the number of accidental findings, there remains a large percent of scientists that refute serendipity. In Rossman's The Psychology of the Inventor, only 75 of 259 inventors confirmed the belief that serendipity contributed any part to inventions. Doubt is a lingering mindset among the inventors. Maybe serendipity occurs less often that the public thinks, and only the freak accidents are recorded in science. But then again, a scientist generally has more schooling and education than a typical inventor. There is no survey among scientists on the acceptance of serendipity, the numbers may be higher or lower. Education may play a key role in a person being more open to an unexpected outcome. The idea of serendipity, however, is highly opinionated, differing from person to person, or inventor to scientist. Just be prepared for your encounter with serendipity. Will you be accepting or throw it aside?